The KAPD and the AAUD-E

Chapter 14

Table of Contents:

Not all the members of the left tendencies immediately accepted
the definitive split in the KPD. Before forming the KAPD, the opposition
successively crystallized around three centers: Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin.

Hamburg, the rallying point for the opposition after Heidelberg,
advocated the immediate creation of a second Communist Party. But it was during
this period that Wolffheim and Laufenberg began to elaborate their “national
bolshevism”. The adversaries of the Left reproached it for having incubated such
a current (cf. L’Internationale Communiste, No. 11). The Hamburg
communists, as Gorter recalled in his Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, were
rapidly sidelined. Bremen then assumed Hamburg’s role as the information
clearing house of the opposition. The Bremen office then represented the
majority of the Left: it was opposed to the split and devoted itself to various
attempts to engage the central committee in negotiations, in order to assert the
rights of the opposition, which the central committee routinely rebuffed. The
Bremen office did not understand that Levi and the central committee had
conducted their intrigues for the sole purpose of excluding the Left and that
they were scarcely worried about the fact that the excluded members comprised
the majority of the Party. The Left also deluded itself by believing that the
Communist International would support its position (cf. Chapter 16). It was in
this spirit that the Bremen office sent representatives to the Third Congress of
the KPD, and even proposed amending the Heidelberg Theses. The Congress
reiterated that all party districts which did not accept the Theses as they
stood must be excluded: that is, the North, Northwest, Lower Saxony, Greater
Berlin, and East Saxony districts. One month later, having in the meantime had
the opportunity to assess the central committee’s stance during the Kapp Putsch,
the KPD (Opposition) abandoned any hope of rejoining the party. The Berlin
district, led by Gorter, Schröder, etc., who would constitute the whole future
leadership of the KAPD, took the initiative to call a conference of the
opposition.

The delegates to the KAPD’s founding Congress (April 4-5)
represented 38,000 militants; other regions would join the party after the
Congress. At that time the KAPD embraced almost the entire membership of the
former KPD, and its social background was similar to that of its predecessor
(derived from every layer of the working class, with a heavy representation of
youth and the unemployed). Despite the presence of three tendencies (Berlin,
Hamburg and Dresden), the atmosphere was particularly “warm” and the
participants had the impression of being part of something radically new.[1] The
break with Spartacism was the definitive break with social democracy. The
tendencies, however, were recognized and the Congress presidium included a
representative from each one.

In effect, this was not a split from an already-existing
organization (despite the fact that the parties’ acronyms would give the
opposite impression, as if the KAPD were a split from the KPD), but the
self-organization, at the apex of a revolutionary period, of the new current
which rejected the weight of the past as it was represented by the Spartacist
leadership, which had been reduced to a mere skeleton financed by Moscow until
it could be grafted onto the left wing of the USPD. The enthusiasm of the KAPD’s
militants resembled that of the first founders of the workers brotherhoods,
unions and leagues of the 19th century. This newness and this
lifestyle which led Rühle to say that “the KAPD is not a party in the
traditional sense” would be eloquently expressed in the organization’s internal
life.

The KAPD asserted that it was the “party of the masses”, as
opposed to the KPD, which was the “party of leaders” and used the masses for its
own political ends. During this period, the KAPD represented the bulk of the
communist party and the revolutionary masses. Less than one year later, the
polemic would seem to have been reversed, when the KPD became the VKPD and was
transformed into a “mass party” (Massenpartei, while the KAPD saw itself
as the Partei der Massen), and the KAPD would attack it for this reason
at the Third Congress of the Communist International. But one cannot really
speak of a reversal in this case unless the KAPD were to abandon the position of
the “masses” in the masses-leaders opposition, and pass over to the “leader”
position. A “party of the masses” is the opposite of a “party of leaders”.

The favorite terrain of the German Left from its birth to its
demise, the masses-leaders debate, born from the trauma of the “leaders’
betrayal” of 1914, was particularly pointless. A crucial aspect of such
oppositions is the fact that the positive term contains its truth in the
negative term and vice-versa. This is also the case for a neighboring
controversy, the centralism-federalism opposition. The betrayals of the leaders
are contrasted with the free activity of the masses. But as long as the masses
are still “masses”, that is, as long as the proletariat does not constitute
itself as a “class”, the masses will produce leaders, and to speak of masses is
to speak in the language of leaders.

Gorter was more precise when he elaborated his position on the
party as a grouping of the “pure”, who would not succumb to opportunism. The
conceptions shared by Gorter and the KAPD also involved the same confusions,
since the party of the revolutionary “masses” must necessarily become a small
group when these masses are no longer revolutionary. It is also true that the
Left succumbed to “educationalism”: this was an enduring trait of the Third
International, propagated by Lenin, who tried to replace the “bourgeois
ideology” of the workers with “socialist ideology”, a trait which the German
Left would never lose.[2]

The majority (Berlin) rejected national bolshevism, but arrived
at a provisional compromise with Rühle’s tendency, which supported the immediate
abolition of the party form. This is why the Program states: “The KAPD is not a
party in the traditional sense.” This thesis was the basis for Rühle’s The
Revolution is Not a Party Matter, written while he was still a member of the
KAPD.

The debate on the KAPD statutes revolved around “finding the form
which would allow the expression of the will of the masses”. On a different
level, this can be compared to Lenin’s efforts in 1903 to seek statutes which
could thwart the spread of opportunism in the party. These formal debates were
characteristic of this world revolutionary period, along with those concerning
the theme of democracy and the idea of the intellectuals bringing consciousness
to the workers. The currents, or rather the individuals, whose writings escape
this mold are very rare. The trend was so dominant that even individuals who had
criticized organizational fetishism, for example, later succumbed to it:
Trotsky, for one, adopting Leninism after 1917. Democracy, organizational
fetishism and educationalism are typical aspects of bourgeois ideology.[3]

These political ideas and practices are reflections of the
development of the relation between the classes of bourgeois society which sank
into the revolutionary crisis at the end of the war. The petty bourgeoisie,
often as threatened by the modernization of capital as the workers, enter the
battle in their own way, considering themselves the salt of the earth, lacking a
communist perspective. In Russia, the most radical fraction of this class,
combined with the proletariat, seized power. The West also had its own problems
concerning the development and organization of social groups. The most radical
movements themselves bear the stigmata of their epoch.

The very short history of the KAPD shows particularly well how
precisely the same statutes were capable of serving two completely opposed
orientations: first, the practical life of a revolutionary organization, and
second, the subsequent decay of that same organization. It could be said that
these statutes were extremely democratic; but it would be more important to
point out that, during the entire period from the party’s foundation in March
1920 until the summer of 1921, the statutes were the faithful expression of an
organization in which a “base” in the traditional sense did not exist: each
member knew what had to be done, and he did not join the KAPD to follow orders
and to be told what to do. Congresses and various kinds of general assemblies
were quite frequent. There was no central committee invested with full powers
for an indeterminate period of time: there was, on the one hand, a current
affairs committee (Geschäftsführung) and also a “Central Committee” (Hauptausschuss)
which met whenever important decisions had to be made, and, unlike the same
structure in other organizations, was on each occasion subject for the most part
to re-election by the party districts, and consisted of the standing
administrative committee and the district delegates. One could say that the
party line was constantly decided by the whole party, which manifested an
enormous force in the KAPD; it was only in order to recuperate this force that
the Communist International tolerated the presence of this party, which never
ceased to openly and violently attack the Communist International’s opportunism.
In the KAPD, throughout its best period, that which Bordiga denominated as
“organic centralism” was actually realized.

When the period of the KAPD’s decomposition began, the same,
quite elaborate, statutes, from the moment when they were no longer the simple
formalization of a real practice, were used in the service of all kinds of
maneuvers in the struggle among the party’s factions (cf. Appendix I).

Everyone attempted, in their own way, to escape from
organizational fetishism. For Gorter: “The organization, the union, because it
is tied to the workplace, must consequently always be the object of vigilance
lest it sabotage the revolution, by aiming for small improvements or conquering
a position of apparent power.”[4] But everyone denounced everyone else’s
fetishism. Mattick wrote that the KAPD “seemed to be more Bolshevik than the
Bolsheviks”,[5] due to its preoccupation with purity. The KAPD and the PCI
(formed by radical elements who managed to subsist within the capitalist world
thanks to the power of their principles) both combined an all-too-sanguinary
evaluation of the role of the party with an overestimation of the workers
organizations (unitary organizations for the former, trade unions for the
latter). Their manner of thinking and their practice were basically very
similar, but they differed in the way they applied identical principles, due to
differences between the German and Italian contexts. What distinguished them was
the way each represented their own and the other’s activity: at
this level the complex interaction of traditions and ideas prevented each one
from understanding the other and the other’s activities. In any event, both
shared the same conception of the party as “nucleus”[6]: “A cadre which can
merge with the proletariat when, thanks to the general development, the latter
will be led into combat.” The Italian Left shared with the German Left the
rejection of the idea of conquering the majority before the revolutionary
period, as well as the idea of the program-party: “Each communist must be
capable of being a leader on his own terrain ... he must be able to resist and,
whatever keeps him going, whatever captivates him, is his program.”[7] It would
be idle to try to exonerate the German Left, at any cost, of the charge of
“anarchism” by quoting the texts where it proclaims its desire for a pure,
diamantine party, a “super-elaborated party-nucleus”.[8] Far from providing
evidence of the Marxist character of the KAPD, we understand this, on the
contrary, as the contradiction of a party situated in the midst of a combative
proletariat, but few in number, and obliged to discover a means to reinforce its
cohesion as an organization, deluding itself concerning its role as a factor
driving the struggles forward (cf. the next Chapter). One cannot locate the most
profound aspect of the Left in the most exaggerated assertion of what
distinguishes it from the rest of the proletarians.[9]

During the first days of August, a Second Congress was held and
adopted the KAPD’s Program. The whole party was at that time convinced that all
the conditions for the revolution were ripe (one can compare this view with that
of the Second Congress of the Communist International, which was taking place at
the same time: cf. Chapter 11). Hunger riots had broken out in May and June. A
bill was pending in the German parliament, prepared several months before, which
would mandate the disarming of all civilians who had weapons. It was thought
that this would unleash defensive reactions which would have to be “pushed
forward”. The Congress decided that the party should focus on this issue: but it
would fail because it would stand utterly alone in its battle.

An important point remained unresolved, however: the
clarification of the KAPD’s relations with the East Saxony tendency (Rühle).
This led to a clash with the Communist International (cf. Chapter 16). Rühle was
not excluded, but his position was condemned in Moscow. The Congress
vociferously rejected an ultimatum from the Executive Committee of the Communist
International which demanded that the KAPD rejoin the KPD. Rühle and his
supporters were excluded only at the end of October during a session of the
central committee.

In mid-August 1920, the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw, and
the Alliance sent important aid shipments to the Poles, which passed through
Germany. The KAPD, AAUD and FAUD carried out sabotage operations against these
shipments which as a whole were quite successful, and tried to use these actions
as a springboard for an insurrection, which was a total failure. The KAPD blamed
the public denunciations of these actions by the KPD and the USPD.[10] Where
logistical reasons prevented their cadres from receiving the orders to refrain
from participating in this action, seizures of power at a local level took
place: such was the case of the Köthen “council republic” in Central Germany,
ridiculed by those who contributed to its defeat. Many radicals were taken
prisoner. “The KAPD was the only party which took a chance on fulfilling its
antidemocratic content in everyday work.”[11]

Even one year later (at the Third Congress of the Communist
International), the KAPD would insistently invoke the “action” of August 1920,
accusing the KPD and the USPD of having abandoned them. According to Jung,[12]
August 1920 was by no means just another incident. At that time, there was a
totally unexpected change in the Russians’ program. When Jung was in Moscow
(prior to the Second Congress of the Communist International) he expected, as
had been agreed by the KAPD, the KPD and the USPD, that the Red Army’s
counteroffensive against the Poles would not have the primary objective of
taking Warsaw, but Upper Silesia (a German-speaking industrial region with a
strong revolutionary movement, which had just been incorporated into Poland). A
red army of German workers was then supposed to be formed there, and only then
was the attack on Warsaw and the main force of the Polish army supposed to
begin. The Russians did not feel that their army was in any condition to
confront Warsaw and the whole Polish army, which was much better equipped than
the Red Army and was also regularly re-supplied by the Alliance, and therefore
counted upon the essential support of a revolutionary movement in Germany.

The German communist parties and the USPD were supposed to be
prepared to assist this maneuver and to undertake an armed offensive. The
decision to proceed directly to Warsaw, made in August, was suddenly taken by
the high command of the Russian army; the KAPD, whose members had meanwhile
organized militarily, did not understand the reason for this change of course.
In fact, the Russians had been deluded by their initial military successes. Yet
this proved that they paid no heed to any revolutionary movement outside their
own (as is well-known, Pilsudski’s counteroffensive was successful).

Jung, placing the event within its proper context and considering
its importance, did not fail to emphasize the general apathy of the German
workers, which the communists’ military groups had struggled to dispel.

In a general strike of electrical workers, in October 1920, the
KAPD, faithful to its role as “trigger” of the movement, denounced the betrayal
of the KPD, SPD, etc. The government itself had to repress the strike. After
March 1921, the KAPD worked to set up action committees in the factories and
promoted “Italian-style” occupations. The Fourth Congress (September 1921) would
assign itself the task of “keeping the revolutionary will of the German
proletariat alive”. The KAPD had turned towards activism, becoming a “party in
the traditional sense”. With the definitive ebb of the revolution, new internal
divisions arose and the KAPD began to turn into a sect. The last revolutionary
enclaves were reduced by external intervention (many were killed in various
actions) and internal causes (activism and the clashes between tendencies). The
creation of the AAUD-E was a vain attempt to react to these developments.

Due to their mutual opposition to the Bolsheviks and the social
democrats, all the factions of the German Left agreed on one point: it was not
the “Party” which would secure power during and after the revolution, but the
councils, institutions which would allow the proletarians to simultaneously
exercise both political and economic power. But the KAPD Program distinguished
between “political” and “economic” councils: a sign of disagreement over the
timing of the party’s dissolution. The AAUD-E represented the current which
supported the party’s immediate dissolution.

The idea of unitary organization, as we have mentioned above,
first appeared in Bremen[13]: this point was the only novel feature of the text
in which it appeared, however, which otherwise still advocated a trade-based
structure as well as parliamentarism. The notion remained confused for a long
time, and further evolved only with the wildcat strikes during and after the
war. The revolutionary workers then organized themselves by factories and by
regions, and sabotaged the trade unions and elections.

The confusion, and the source of later disagreements and splits,
derived from the fact that the idea of unitary organization was also shared by
individuals and groups belonging to a party: the KPD. The Left defended the idea
at the KPD’s founding Congress against Luxemburg and the right, for whom the
tasks of the trade unions were to be carried out after the revolution by the
councils.[14] Since they had agitated in favor of an organization which rejected
the party, while they belonged to a party, they arrived at the idea that this
party (the KPD(O) and later the KAPD) must dissolve itself into the unitary
organization. Schematically, two positions took shape: immediate
dissolution or dissolution at the end of a “certain period of time”. This
“certain period of time”, of course, generated new tendencies, from the moment
when more refined distinctions began to be made. In the meantime, as Schröder
said in his On the Future of the New Society,[15] the party would be
preserved as a “necessary evil”. The supporters of unitary organization, not
being numerous enough among the proletariat, had no choice but to join the
party.

While the whole radical left (uniting all tendencies) was
organized in the KAPD, the split first began, as so often happens, over another
issue: the position to adopt regarding Russia and the Communist International.
Rühle, who was a convinced anti-bolshevik and opposed the KAPD’s joining the
Communist International, was excluded from the KAPD, which wanted to collaborate
with the Communist International. Rühle had often been reproached for his
“semi-anarchism”. Yet the KAPD had attempted to overcome the thesis opposing
Marxism to anarchism, as black to white. One of its delegates to the Third World
Congress thought that the anarchists underestimated “the organized class
struggle ... that they lived history too quickly, that their tactic is premature
by several decades”. This is insufficient, of course, but the renascent
revolutionary movement synthesized what was good in Marxism and anarchism,
implicitly criticizing[16] the opinions of Marx and Engels.[17]

Rühle’s position on Russia was quickly supported by the tendency
which was in favor of immediate unitary organization, and the effective break
within the KAPD and the AAUD rapidly unfolded. In December, the Saxony district
of the KAPD dissolved itself into the AAUD. Later, the Hamburg AAUD excluded
from its ranks all those who wanted to remain in the KAPD. Throughout Germany, a
fraction of the leftists immediately entered the unitary organization. The
latter would criticize the KAPD during the March Action.

In October 1921 this movement held its first autonomous
conference and gave itself the name AAUD-E, the “E” standing for “Unitary
Organization”. This conference adopted “The Guiding Principles of the AAUD-E”.
The AAUD-E then had 13 economic districts which counted several tens of
thousands of members, but would decompose even faster than the other left
organizations.

The AAUD-E’s theory was essentially expressed in Die Aktion
after 1920 and in Rühle’s pamphlets, each being a development of the previous
one.[18] Pannekoek, although not a member of any group after 1920, showed, in a
letter dated July 15, 1920, that he was closer to the AAUD-E than to the other
left tendencies: “The idea that two organizations of ‘enlightened’ workers
should exist is false.”[19] It was upon the principle of the unitary
organization that the KAUD (Communist Workers Union of Germany) was founded in
1931, regrouping the remnants of the various groups of the German Left.

[2]PC, No. 56, passim. The same criticism could be
applied to M. Rubel, who considered Marx to be primarily an “educator”: cf. his
introduction to Pages Choisies de K. Marx, Payot, 1970, and Marx
critique du Marxisme, Payot, 1974.

[9] Letter from Marx to Schweitzer, October 13, 1868: “The sect
does not seek its reason for existence and its sense of pride in what it has
in common with the class movement, but in a particular aspect which
distinguishes it from that movement.”